Invasive species are wreaking havoc in waters around the world — from Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades, to Asian carp in the Mississippi River, to turtles native to the US on every continent except Antarctica. Faith Lapidus reports on efforts to control the reptile in Poland.
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Month: July 2017
In India, Drug Makers Try to Stay a Step Ahead of FDA
In 28 years in India’s pharmaceuticals sector, Rajiv Desai has never been busier.
Most of the last six months on his desk calendar is marked green, indicating visits to the 12 plants of Lupin, India’s No. 2 drugmaker, where Desai is a senior quality control executive. Only one day is red — a day off.
That’s what is needed these days to satisfy the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that standards are being met.
“In this sector, you’re only as good as your last inspection,” Desai said in his office in suburban Mumbai.
Often dubbed “the pharmacy of the world,” India is home to the most FDA-approved plants outside of the United States and supplies about 40 percent of the $70 billion worth of generic drugs sold in the country.
Damaged reputation
But sanctions and bans have badly damaged India’s reputation and slowed growth in the $16 billion sector. Drug exports fell in the fiscal year ending in March 2017.
More than 40 plants have been banned by the FDA for issues ranging from data fraud to hygiene since India’s then-largest drugmaker Ranbaxy was pulled up for serious violations in 2008.
Drug companies have spent millions of dollars on training, new equipment and foreign consultants. Yet the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance of the top 20 firms says its members still need at least five more years to get manufacturing standards and data reliability up to scratch.
The case of Lupin shows why.
In the next few months, the FDA is expected to clear Lupin’s Goa plant of problems found in 2015, Desai said.
However, the agency also published a notice last week citing issues with data storage at its plant in Pithampur, central India.
If companies want to continue to sell into the world’s biggest health care market, they must keep constant vigilance.
Asked about Lupin’s case, the FDA said in a statement it did not “comment on compliance matters,” but said generally: “India’s regulatory infrastructure must keep pace to ensure that relevant quality and safety standards are met.”
Form 483
India has its own standards body, the Central Drug Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), which maintains that its quality controls are stringent enough to ensure drugs are safe.
The FDA has taken matters into its own hands and gradually expanded in India to more than a dozen full-time staff.
Inspections are frequent and increasingly unannounced. If the agency finds problems, it issues a Form 483, a notice outlining the violations, which if not resolved can lead to a warning letter and in worst case, a ban.
Violations range from hygiene, such as rat traps and dirty laboratories, to inadequate controls on systems that store data, leaving it open to tampering.
None of the violations the FDA has cited in India have explicitly said the drugs are unsafe, and when companies are banned by the FDA they can sell into other markets, including in the developing world, until the bans are lifted.
There are also no studies showing that the drugs have harmed anyone in the world. But by definition, the notices are issued when the FDA finds conditions that might harm public health.
Don’t tell anyone
Industry watchers say Lupin, which specializes in oral contraceptives and drugs for diabetes and hypertension, is doing better than most. So far none of its infractions have extended to a ban.
On a recent visit by Reuters to its Goa plant, blue-uniformed employees could be seen working on giant machines, then making notes in hardbound registers. These are being phased out as Lupin transitions to more secure e-files.
Employees are often videotaped to ensure they follow standard operating procedure. Manufacturers have cut back to focus on quality over quantity: five years ago, Lupin was making 1 billion pills a month at one of its Goa plants. Now it makes 450 million.
Both the company and employees needed to be willing to acknowledge errors, Desai said. The first impulse in the past was often “don’t tell anyone,” he said.
“We’re humans after all, not robots. We make mistakes,” said Amol Kolatkar, a production head at the Goa site.
As recently as three years ago, training was a formality, Desai said. Now, when an error is traced to an employee, the entire team undergoes fresh training.
“I have worked at a pharma company before, but this is the first time I went through such a training,” said another Lupin quality control officer, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The quality control role is key.
“They (Lupin) have had a practice where company quality heads report directly to Nilesh Gupta (the managing director),” said Amey Chalke, an analyst at HDFC Securities. “Some other companies have also started doing that now.”
The companies also have to be willing to spend big. Lachman, PwC and Boston Consulting conduct mock audits at the Goa plant every three to six months, at a cost of up to $400 an hour.
“These days the FDA is giving us 483 on small, small things,” a third quality control officer said. “So we are always auditing.”
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Canada’s Desjardins Suspends Lending for Energy Pipelines
Canadian lender Desjardins is considering no longer funding energy pipelines, a spokesman said Saturday, citing concerns about the impact such projects may have on the environment.
Desjardins, the largest association of credit unions in North America, Friday temporarily suspended lending for such projects and may make the decision permanent, spokesman Jacques Bouchard told Reuters by telephone.
He said the lender would make a final decision in September.
Following ING
Desjardins, a backer of Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd’s high-profile expansion of its Trans Mountain pipeline, has been evaluating its policy for such lending for months, Bouchard said.
If it makes the decision permanent, that would likely mean Desjardins would not help finance other major Canadian pipelines projects, including TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL and Energy East and Enbridge Inc’s Line 3.
Such a move would follow that of Dutch lender ING Groep NV, which has a long-standing policy of not funding projects directly related to oil sands, and is the latest sign that pipelines could have a harder time getting funding as banks face increasing pressure to back away.
Patrick Bonin, a campaigner with the environmental group Greenpeace, praised Desjardins for temporarily halting pipeline funding, but called on the lender to make it permanent and reconsider its C$145 million ($113 million) commitment to Trans Mountain.
Indigenous, environmental groups
Desjardins is among 24 financial institutions that agreed to lend money to a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan Canada, majority owned by Kinder Morgan Inc of Houston, according to regulatory filings.
A coalition of more than 20 indigenous and environmental groups, including Greenpeace, in June called on 28 major banks to pull funding for Trans Mountain, citing the risk of pipeline spills and their potential contribution to climate change.
ING, which was targeted by the coalition, said it will not fund any of the major Canadian pipelines.
The same month, Sweden’s largest national pension fund, AP7, sold investments in six companies that it says violate the Paris climate agreement, including TransCanada, in a decision environmentalists believe is the first of its kind.
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‘Monster Stage’ Likely to Shake Up Tour Standings
After 1,400 kilometers (nearly 900 miles) in eight days of racing, the suffer-fest Tour de France now turns the pain dial up a notch or five. How does scaling half the height of Everest in one day sound?
That’s the monstrous challenge lurking Sunday for the 193 tired, sunbaked riders who have made it this far.
For the moment, when race leader Chris Froome looks over his shoulder, he sees a gaggle of challengers hot on his heels. Just 61 seconds separate him from 10th-placed Rafal Majka of Poland. More dangerous contenders are closer still to the three-time Tour champion.
Climbs defy categorization
All that will likely change on the succession of seven climbs in eastern France’s Jura mountains Sunday — three of them so tough they defy categorization on cycling’s sliding scale of climbing toughness. “A monster stage” is how Froome described it, predicting the race standings will “get blown to pieces.”
Total elevation, when all the ascents are added together: 4,600 meters (15,000 feet). That’s just shy of the height of western Europe’s highest peak, Mont Blanc, and about belly button-height on Everest.
The last “hors categorie” climb, Mont du Chat, may be named after a cat but looks on Tour maps like a lion’s fang. With an average 10 percent gradient, and even steeper than that in parts, it will push riders already exhausted by the previous six climbs to the very limit. Hearts pounding, legs burning, they will have no time to recover from its hairpin bends before plunging into more fast, twisting bends on the descent. Clear heads and quick reactions are a must: Not easy when body and brain are screaming for rest.
“That climb is savage,” Froome said. “I imagine it’s going to blow the general classification right open.”
Tired legs
Complicating matters: Saturday’s stage, also in the Jura mountains, was far from easy.
Froome’s teammates at Sky had to ride hard to make sure that riders who rode off at the front of the race, chasing the stage victory, didn’t get too far ahead and take the overall lead away from him. The question now is whether Sky will pay for the effort Sunday and run out of juice on the 181.5-kilometer (112-mile) Stage 9 from Nantua to Chambery in the Alps, arguably the most grueling of this Tour’s 21 stages.
“It was good to see them pull on the front,” said Australian Richie Porte of the rival BMC team, who is 39 seconds behind Froome overall, in fifth place. “I hope there’s some tired legs among them tomorrow.”
Grinding away from pursuers on a small mountain road more suited to goats than riders, Lilian Calmejane won Stage 8 to the Rousses ski station, for his first victory in his first Tour.
Calmejane, riding for French team Direct Energie, fought cramps after breaking away on the final climb and hung on, tongue lolling, for victory in only the second visit by the Tour to the Rousses, with its cross-country ski trails through dense forests.
It was the second win at this Tour for a French rider, after Arnaud Demare’s on Stage 4.
Froome rode in 50 seconds after Calmejane — plenty close enough to retain the yellow jersey — in a group with all of the other top contenders for overall victory in Paris on July 23.
Saturday frights
Froome’s day wasn’t without incident: On a downhill, right-hand bend after the second of three rated climbs on the 187.5 kilometer (116-mile) stage from Dole, the Briton went into roadside gravel instead of cornering. Froome stayed on his bike and quickly recovered. But teammate Geraint Thomas went over roadside barriers. Thomas quickly rejoined the race, and Froome said his teammate was uninjured.
The corner “sprang up on us a little bit,” Froome said. “One moment you’re in control, the next thing you’re in a ditch.”
Calmejane held off Dutch rider Robert Gesink, hot on his heels, on the final climb and rolling finish. Cramping from his effort, Calmejane had to slow and rise off his saddle to stretch his legs in the final section and then gritted his teeth and pedaled onward to the line.
“I gave myself a huge fright,” Calmejane said of his cramps. “It would have been so sad to lose the stage like that.”
Gesink, of the Netherlands’ Lotto-Jumbo team, rode in 37 seconds after Calmejane. French rider Guillaume Martin placed third on the stage, another 13 seconds back.
By being the first rider to scale the day’s last climb, Calmejane enjoyed the added bonus of picking up enough points to take the polka-dot jersey, awarded for points collected on climbs, off the shoulders of Italian Fabio Aru.
“Winning alone like that is incredible,” said Calmejane, who also won a stage at his first Grand Tour, the Spanish Vuelta, last year. “It’s everything I dreamed of.”
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Trump Is Biggest Attraction at G-20 Summit
The G-20 summit of the world’s richest economies wrapped up Saturday against a backdrop of angry protests, and a pledge by leaders to fight protectionism in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy and Brexit. The U.S. leader took center stage at the two-day gathering, and his meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin was the major headline. VOA Europe correspondent Luis Ramirez reports from Hamburg.
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US, Russia on Collision Course Vying for Europe Gas Market
Visiting Poland this week, U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to boost exports of American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Central Europe and take on Russia’s stranglehold on energy supplies.
“America stands ready to help Poland and other European nations diversify their energy supplies so that you can never be held hostage to a single supplier,” Trump told reporters after talks with his Polish counterpart Thursday.
Up to now, that supplier has been Russia. It supplied around a third of Europe’s gas demand in 2016, with an even greater share in many of the former Soviet states in Central and Eastern Europe.
Watch: US, Russia on Collision Course in Competition for European Gas Market
Natural gas and dominance
Russian state-owned firm Gazprom shut off pipelines to Ukraine in 2015, depriving Kyiv of a major source of revenue and disrupting supplies to Eastern Europe.
“It’s a key pillar of Russian foreign policy: of using gas and energy as a means of asserting dominance over Central Europe,” said Marek Matraszek, founder of the lobby firm CEC Government Relations, who played a major role in the Polish government’s acquisition of U.S.-built F-16 fighter planes.
The first shipment of American liquefied natural gas arrived at the port of Swinoujscie on Poland’s Baltic coast last month. The port facility and liquefaction plant were finished in 2015, aimed at diversifying the country’s energy sources and enabling Poland to become a hub supplying imported gas across Central and Eastern Europe.
With that in mind, the Three Seas Initiative Summit in Warsaw Thursday brought together leaders from a dozen Eastern European nations, plus Trump. He pledged the United States will never use energy as a political tool.
Russia’s pipeline
Energy analyst Grzegorz Malecki, a former head of Poland’s Foreign Intelligence Agency says Russia will be watching with interest.
“If this new source of gas supplies is moved forward and the infrastructure built, it may cause Russia to change its approach. The Polish government is probably counting on it. Russia may change its politics towards Poland regarding energy,” Malecki told VOA in an interview this week.
Russia has plans of its own to boost exports. Initially scheduled to open in 2019, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would double its capacity to export gas directly to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine. Eastern European states want the project blocked.
“If we want to have United States’ LNG supplies in Central Europe, we also want to see the United States getting tough on Nord Stream 2, which means getting tough on Russia,” Matraszek said.
American LNG and the Nord Stream 2 project are on a collision course, with Poland stuck in the middle, Malecki said.
“It’s hard to hide the fact that these two projects compete with each other. The odds are that there will be a clash of these energy giants in Europe,” he said.
Three-hundred kilometers west along the Baltic coast from where the existing Nord Stream pipeline comes ashore in Germany, Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin held their first face-to-face meeting at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg Friday.
If the American LNG deal goes through, it could have a broader impact on U.S.-Russia relations, said John Hannah of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“I think it could all happen relatively quickly and in a way that will give us much stronger leverage over Putin and the Russians to begin pushing back against some of the more aggressive activities that we’ve seen, not only in Europe but against the United States as well,” Hannah said.
Trump remains upbeat about his relationship with Putin, but the evolving energy policies in Europe will likely remain a source of friction.
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Fiber Optics Help Understand Australian Bushfires
Each year, wildfires around the world devastate thousands of square kilometers of forests and grasslands and make many people homeless. Some plants recover faster from fire than others, and scientists would like to know why. In Australia, they are experimenting with a simple monitoring device relying on fiber optics. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Biodegradable Microplastics Could Help Ocean Health
Microplastics are pieces of plastic less than 5 millimeters in size. They make up part of the estimated tens of millions of tons of plastic that gets washed into the ocean every year. That could be hurting fish that eat plastic, and humans, when we eat fish. But help may be on the way. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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US, Russia on Collision Course in Competition for European Gas Market
Visiting Poland this week, US President Donald Trump pledged to boost exports of American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Central Europe, challenging Russia’s dominance of the market. Many European countries accuse Moscow of using energy as a political tool. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Warsaw, analysts say the United States and Russia are on a collision course over energy supplies to the region.
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US Economy Adds 222,000 Jobs in June; Wages Remain Flat
Job creation in the U.S. appears to have picked up speed, with employers adding 222,000 jobs last month. But the unemployment rate ticked higher as more Americans resumed their job search. That’s probably a good thing, according to some economists who say the bigger challenge is how to speed up wage growth. Mil Arcega reports.
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Facebook to Build Housing in Silicon Valley for First Time
The shortage of housing in California’s Silicon Valley has gotten so severe that Facebook Inc. on Friday proposed taking homebuilding into its own hands for the first time with a plan to construct 1,500 units near its headquarters.
The growth of Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and other tech companies has strained neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay area that were not prepared for an influx of tens of thousands of workers during the past decade. Home prices and commute times have risen.
Tech companies have responded with measures such as internet-equipped buses for employees with long commutes.
Facebook has offered at least $10,000 in incentives to workers who move closer to its offices.
Those steps, though, have not reduced complaints that tech companies are making communities unaffordable, and they have mostly failed to address the area’s housing shortage.
“The problem with Silicon Valley is you don’t have enough supply to keep up with the demand,” said Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at real estate research firm CoreLogic.
With Facebook’s construction plan, the company said it wanted to invest in Menlo Park, the city some 45 miles (72 km) south of San Francisco where it moved in 2011.
The company said it wants to build a “village” that will also have 1.75 million square feet of office space and 125,000 square feet of retail space.
“Part of our vision is to create a neighborhood center that provides long-needed community services,” John Tenanes, Facebook’s vice president for global facilities, said in a statement.
The 1,500 Facebook housing units would be open to anyone, not just employees, and 15 percent of them would be offered at below market rates, the company said.
Facebook said it expects the review process to take two years.
Alphabet has taken a smaller step, buying 300 modular apartment units for short-term employee housing, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.
Menlo Park Mayor Kirsten Keith said in an interview that there were concerns about whether the Facebook plan would increase traffic, a subject the city’s planning department would study.
She said, though, that Facebook’s plan fits with the city’s own long-term plan for development, and that the city was excited about the additional housing.
Facebook’s Tenanes said the density of the proposed development could also entice spending on transit projects.
“The region’s failure to continue to invest in our transportation infrastructure alongside growth has led to congestion and delay,” he said.
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Ringo Starr Celebrates Birthday, Talks McCartney Reunion on New Album
Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr celebrated his 77th birthday on Friday by announcing a new album that will feature former bandmate Paul McCartney.
Starr’s 19th solo album “Give More Love” will be released on Sept. 15 and will include McCartney on two tracks – “We’re on the Road Again” and “Show Me the Way,” which is dedicated to Starr’s wife, Barbara Bach.
“We are still mates,” Starr told Reuters of his former bandmate. “He’s out on the road, he’s got his own life. I’m out on the road a lot making records and he was in town so I called him and I said, ‘I’ve got this track for you to play on.'”
Starr called McCartney “the most melodic bass player in the world.”
“I love the way he plays,” he said.
Starr holds his birthday celebrations in public every year, raising awareness of his peace-and-love message.
On Friday he led a crowd gathered on the sunny, hot streets of Hollywood in a “peace and love” chant, joined on stage by guests including guitarist Joe Walsh, who is a member of Starr’s band and also his brother-in-law, as well as “Twin Peaks” director David Lynch.
“There is a lot of trouble in the world, a lot of violence in the world and a lot of starvation and a lot of people without water,” Starr said. “I’m a big supporter of Water Aid because everyone should at least have water … It’s not all bombs and
guns.”
Starr and McCartney made musical history as members of seminal 1960s English band the Beatles, along with the late George Harrison and John Lennon. The “Fab Four” led the British invasion into U.S. pop music and became one of the most successful bands in the world.
All four Beatles have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame both as part of the band and as solo artists.
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Argentina Reopens Museum for Tango Great Gardel
At the peak of his career in the 1930s, Carlos Gardel’s fans used to gather at the curb outside his home, hoping to hear one of Argentina’s greatest tango singers practice a tune before a show. Now, they can gather inside to hear him again.
Visitors to the remodeled “Carlos Gardel Museum Home” at his former house in the Argentine capital can see black-and-white images of key moments in the career of the singer who gave tango a huge boost worldwide.
And the voice is on tap as well. Visitors can hear 893 recordings, which make up most of his repertoire, through headphones installed there.
“It’s very interesting to visit the house where he lived and to give children a chance to understand that there are other types of music,” said Siomara Gordon, a Colombian tourist visiting the museum. “He expresses love like no other.”
Gardel’s cult remains powerful more than eight decades after his death in a 1935 air crash in Colombia at the age of 44. Argentines often leave carnations and burning cigarettes at his tomb in Chacarita cemetery in Buenos Aires and couples dance to his songs in packed halls.
Iconic images of him with a fedora hat pulled over his brow and a cigarette dangling from his lips are plastered on walls throughout Buenos Aires — and on those of Argentine restaurants worldwide.
The museum was first inaugurated in 2003, and reopened in June. It is located in the tango-crazed Abasto neighborhood of Argentina’s capital, where Gardel used to frequent cafes and often perform. Gardel bought the home in 1926 at the peak of his career and lived there with his mother, Marie-Berthe Gardes. The place became the gathering point for journalists and friends visiting the singer.
“Gardel had this grand piano where he would rehearse his compositions. Guitarists and other musicians would get together with other friends and Gardel’s mother, who was a great cook, would cook for all of them,” museum director Carlos Koffman, said near the windows through which Gardel’s fans outside could hear him practice.
The museum is filled with mementos including unpublished audiovisual material made shortly before his death. There is an authenticated copy of Gardel’s birth certificate, which shows that he was born in Toulouse, France, on Dec. 11, 1890.
One room in the exhibition focuses on Gardel’s tour of Latin America before his death. Images from Argentina’s National Archives show Gardel’s remains returning to Buenos Aires in 1936, his wake and his funeral.
“Gardel is huge today,” said museum visitor Mariano Herrera. “And he’ll continue to be great throughout time.”
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US Energy Department Helps Power Firms Defend Against Cyber Attacks
The U.S. Department of Energy said on Friday it is helping U.S. firms defend against a hacking campaign that targeted power companies including at least one nuclear plant, saying the attacks have not impacted electricity generation or the grid.
News of the attacks surfaced a week ago when Reuters reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a June 28 alert to industrial firms, warning them of hacking targeting the nuclear, power and critical infrastructure sectors.
“DOE is working with our government and industry partners to mitigate any impact from a cyber intrusion affecting entities in the energy sector,” a Department of Energy representative said in an email to Reuters. “At this time, there has been no impact to systems controlling U.S. energy infrastructure. Any potential impact appears to be limited to administrative and business networks.”
It was not clear who was responsible for the hacks. The joint report by the DHS and the FBI did not identify the attackers, though it described the hacks as “an advanced persistent threat,” a term that U.S. officials typically but not always use to describe attacks by culprits.
Dozen U.S. power companies attacked
The DOE discussed its response to the attacks after Bloomberg News reported on Friday that the Wolf Creek nuclear facility in Kansas was among at least a dozen U.S. power firms breached in the attack, citing current and former U.S. officials who were not named.
A representative with the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corp. declined to say if the plant was hacked, but said it continued to operate safely.
“There has been absolutely no operational impact to Wolf Creek. The reason that is true is because the operational computer systems are completely separate from the corporate network,” company spokeswoman Jenny Hageman said via email.
A separate Homeland Security technical bulletin issued on June 28 included details of code used in a hacking tool that suggest the hackers sought to use the password of a Wolf Creek employee to access the network.
Hageman declined to say if hackers had gained access to that employee’s account. The employee could not be reached for comment.
Tainted emails
The June 28 alert said that hackers have been observed using tainted emails to harvest credentials to gain access to networks of their targets.
“Historically, cyber actors have strategically targeted the energy sector with various goals ranging from cyber espionage to the ability to disrupt energy systems in the event of a hostile conflict,” the report said.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear expert at the nonprofit group Union of Concerned Scientists, said reactors have a certain amount of immunity from cyber attacks because their operation systems are separate from digital business networks. But over time it would not be impossible for hackers to potentially do harm.
“Perhaps the biggest vulnerability nuclear plants face from hackers would be their getting information on plant designs and work schedules with which to conduct a physical attack,” Lochbaum said.
DOE shares information
The DOE said it has shared information about this incident with industry, including technical details on the attack and mitigation suggestions.
“Security professionals from government and industry are working closely to share information so energy system operators can defend their systems,” the agency representative said. Earlier, the FBI and DHS issued a joint statement saying “There is no indication of a threat to public safety” because the impact appears limited to administrative and business networks.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not received any notifications of a cyber event that has affected critical systems at a nuclear plant, said spokesman Scott Burnell.
A nuclear industry spokesman told Reuters last Saturday that hackers have never gained access to a nuclear plant.
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Facebook Meets With Pakistan Government After Blasphemy Death Sentence
A senior Facebook official met with Pakistan’s interior minister on Friday to discuss a demand the company prevent blasphemous content or be blocked.
The meeting comes after a Pakistani counter-terrorism court sentenced a 30-year-old man to death for making blasphemous comments on Facebook, part of a wider crack-down.
Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of public policy, met Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan, who offered to approve a Facebook office in Pakistan, which has 33 million users of the network.
Khan said Pakistan believes in freedom of expression, but that does not include insulting Islam or stoking religious tensions.
“We cannot allow anyone to misuse social media for hurting religious sentiments,” Khan said.
Facebook called the meeting “constructive.”
“Facebook met with Pakistan officials to express the company’s deep commitment to protecting the rights of the people who use its service, and to enabling people to express themselves freely and safely,” the company said in an email.
“It was an important and constructive meeting in which we raised our concerns over the recent court cases and made it clear we apply a strict legal process to any government request for data or content restrictions.”
Pakistan’s social media crack-down is officially aimed at weeding out blasphemy and shutting down accounts promoting terrorism, but civil rights activists say it has also swept up writers and bloggers who criticize the government or military.
One of five prominent writers and activists who disappeared for nearly three weeks this year later told a U.N. human rights event in March that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies had kidnapped him and tortured him in custody.
Others’ families said right-wing and Islamist parties had filed blasphemy accusations against them to punish them for critical writings.
Anything deemed insulting to Islam or the Prophet Muhammad carries a death penalty in Pakistan, and sometimes a mere allegation can lead to mob violence and lynchings. Right groups say the law is frequently abused to settle personal scores.
In April, a Pakistani university student, Mashal Khan, was beaten to death by a mob after being accused of blasphemous content on Facebook. Police arrested 57 people accused in the attack and said they had found no evidence Khan committed blasphemy.
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Georgia Health Commissioner Named CDC Director
Georgia’s health commissioner was named Friday to lead the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal government’s top public health agency.
Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald is an OB-GYN and has been head of the Georgia Department of Public Health since 2011. She succeeds Dr. Tom Frieden, who resigned as CDC director in January at the end of the Obama administration.
Fitzgerald was appointed by Dr. Tom Price, who was a congressman from Georgia before he was named head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by President Donald Trump.
“Having known Dr. Fitzgerald for many years, I know that she has a deep appreciation and understanding of medicine, public health, policy and leadership — all qualities that will prove vital as she leads the CDC in its work to protect America’s health 24/7,” Price said in a statement.
Fitzgerald, 70, has had strong ties to the Republican Party. She was a GOP candidate for Congress twice in the 1990s. She was also a health care policy adviser to Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, and the late Sen. Paul Coverdell.
Fitzgerald is respected in the public health community, and her choice drew praise from Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
“From her work as a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist to her recent service as the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, Dr. Fitzgerald is more than prepared to face the health challenges of our time, including climate change, Zika, Ebola, and our growing burden of chronic disease,” Benjamin said in a statement.
The CDC investigates disease outbreaks, researches the cause and frequency of health problems and promotes prevention efforts. It is the only federal agency headquartered outside of Washington, D.C. It has nearly 12,000 employees and 10,000 contractors worldwide.
Her first day at CDC was Friday. A CDC spokeswoman said Fitzgerald would not be available for interviews.
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Mexico Coach Osorio Banned From Gold Cup For Insults
Mexico coach Juan Carlos Osorio has been effectively banned from the Gold Cup by FIFA for insulting match officials.
FIFA banned Osorio for six matches on Friday for his behavior during the Confederations Cup third-place game last Sunday, when Mexico lost to Portugal 2-1.
Mexico will have to play up to six games to retain the Gold Cup in the U.S., starting on Sunday against El Salvador in San Diego.
Osorio was incensed when his team was not awarded a penalty against Portugal.
FIFA said Osorio “used insulting words towards the match officials while displaying an aggressive attitude towards them.”
If Mexico plays fewer than six games at the Gold Cup, Osorio’s suspension will carry over to its next internationals.
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Minnesota’s Measles Outbreak Looks to Be Tapering Off
The state of Minnesota is battling the biggest outbreak of measles since 1990, and state health officials are hoping it is tapering off. Seventy-eight people caught the disease, mostly Somali-Americans, and nearly a third were hospitalized.
The Somali-American community in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is tight-knit. At one time, they had the highest rates of vaccinations against measles than any other group in the state until they heard this:
“Autism is caused by vaccines administered (to those) under 3 years of life.”
Anti-vaccination groups believe that vaccines expose children to health risks and can cause harm, and they convinced Somali-Americans in Minneapolis that the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), caused autism. So while they continued getting their children vaccinated for everything else, the rates for this particular vaccine dropped dramatically.
Patsy Stinchfield is a nurse in Minnesota. She blames the state’s measles outbreak on anti-vaccination groups.
“I would say almost exclusively the whole responsibility lands on the anti-vaccine movement,” she said, “and the reason is misinformation and myths spread about a link between MMR and autism, of which there is none, and science has proven that not to be true,” she added. She spoke to VOA via Skype.
Since March, Stinchfield has been at the forefront of Minnesota’s measles outbreak. She says the Somali-Americans came together fast to hold community meetings where doctors could talk about the safety and effectiveness of the measles vaccine.
Since then, they have been getting to clinics to get their children vaccinated.
“Since the outbreak, the message has gotten out that measles, mumps, rubella vaccine is safe,” Stinchfield said. “It’s effective, and typically in a week in Hennepin County, which is the Minneapolis county, there would be 500 MMRs given, and for three weeks in a row, there were 3,000 MMRs given for three weeks in a row, so that is a tremendous response.”
Stinchfield said measles took the Somali-Americas by surprise.
“They did not think that measles would be in the United States,” she said, “and so the level of fear was greater for autism. This has now shifted, because the level of fear and the level of fear for measles is great because these families know measles. They’ve had loved ones die of measles in Somalia.”
Measles was wiped out in the U.S. 17 years ago, but outbreaks still happen when someone carries the virus back from a country where measles still circulates.
Fortunately, no one who caught measles in Minnesota had any serious complications, and state officials are hoping to declare the outbreak over by the end of July.
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China Says Jump in North Korea Trade Just a Blip
A jump in first-quarter trade between China and North Korea was “unexpected” and masks a declining trend, a state-run Chinese newspaper said Friday, after U.S. President Donald Trump denounced China’s trade with its isolated neighbor.
Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40 percent in the first quarter, Trump said via Twitter Wednesday, casting doubt on China’s assertion it is working to press North Korea to rein in its nuclear and missile programs.
37.4 percent blip
Data released in April by Beijing showed China’s trade with North Korea grew 37.4 percent in the first quarter over the corresponding 2016 period, the Global Times said, adding that subsequent data showed declining trade in April and May.
“First quarter data cannot speak for the whole year,” the paper said in an editorial that carried the headline “China-NK Q1 trade data must be read fairly.”
“The trade volume for 2017 is unlikely to grow significantly from last year,” it said.
Sanctions implemented
While the first-quarter rise was “somewhat unexpected,” the newspaper said China had been strictly implementing U.N. sanctions against North Korea, and that a ban on imports of its coal had taken a toll on two-way trade.
The newspaper said trade between China and North Korea had declined during the previous three years.
China has not imported North Korean coal since it banned imports of the fuel Feb. 18, the General Administration of Customs said in April.
The Global Times, published by the official People’s Daily, reiterated that sanctions should not affect normal trade activities with North Korea, especially those concerning people’s livelihoods.
“America’s public opinion mistakenly depicts U.N. sanctions on Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile activities as a total embargo,” it said, citing a four-fold increase in China’s grain exports to North Korea in the first quarter. “Beijing will never export materials to Pyongyang that could be used for nuclear and missile activities.”
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Tesla to Install World’s Largest Battery in Australia
South Australia has picked Tesla to install the world’s largest grid-scale battery, which would be paired with a wind farm provided by France’s Neoen, in a major test of the reliability of large-scale renewable energy use.
South Australia, the fifth-biggest state with a population of 1.7 million, has raced ahead of the rest of the country in turning to wind power. Its shutdown of coal-fired plants has led to outages across the eastern part of the nation, driving up energy prices.
The drawback to South Australia’s heavy reliance on renewables has been an inability to adequately store that energy, leading to vulnerabilities when the wind doesn’t blow.
The project is designed to have a storage capacity of 129 megawatt-hours, which is enough to light up 30,000 homes, a Tesla spokesman told Reuters.
100 days or it’s free
Under the terms of the agreement, Tesla must deliver the 100-MW battery within 100 days of a contract being signed or it’s free, matching a commitment made by Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk in a Twitter post in March.
“There will be a lot of people that will look at this, ‘did they get it done within 100 days? Did it work?’” Musk told reporters in South Australia’s capital city of Adelaide. “We are going to make sure it does.”
The 100-day deadline will begin within a few weeks, a political source said, after a connectivity agreement is reached between South Australia, Telsa, Neoen and the Australian Energy Market Operator.
Musk and a spokesman for South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill declined to reveal the cost of the project.
Musk said a failure to deliver the project in time would cost his company “$50 million or more,” without elaborating.
Lithium ready
The battery, designed to provide emergency back-up power if a shortfall in energy is predicted, will be built on site in South Australia, a spokesman for the state government said.
Tesla said in a statement that upon completion by December 2017, the system would be the largest lithium-ion battery storage project in the world, overtaking an 80 megawatt-hour power station at Mira Loma in Ontario, Calif., also built using Tesla batteries.
The neighboring state of Victoria is also seeking 100 megawatt-hour battery capacity, to be installed by January.
Lithium-ion batteries have been in widespread use since about 1991, but mostly on a small scale, such as in laptops and cell phones.
A typical lithium-ion battery can store 150 watt-hours of electricity in 1 kilogram of battery, representing more than double the capacity of nickel batteries.
Its proponents have been pushing to use lithium batteries on a grander scale.
“For lithium technology to take off on a global scale, they clearly need the storage capacity to make sure renewables can deliver 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Adrian Griffin, a geologist who specializes in lithium extraction.
Dozens of companies from 10 countries, including privately owned Lyon Group, working with U.S. power company AES Corp, had expressed interest in the South Australian project.
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Minnesota’s Measles Outbreak Appears To Be Tapering Off
Measles was officially wiped out in the United States 17 years ago. But outbreaks still happen when someone carries the virus back from a country where measles exists. The state of Minnesota is battling the biggest outbreak of measles since 1990, and state health officials are hoping it is now tapering off. Seventy-eight people caught the disease and nearly a third were hospitalized. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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Security Apps Help Users Avoid Shooting Incidents in Violent Cities
Street violence and gang shootings are on the rise in many big cities worldwide. Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro sees an average of 15 gun battles a day, and innocent bystanders are often caught in the crossfire. But people in Rio can now avoid street violence thanks to several smartphone apps. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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